260) Is Four Days Too Long?

July 22, 2008
Tuesday

Morning: So, I probably have gone too long without my dialysis. I had my regular dialysis last Thursday (# 257), then went again early Friday morning (# 258) instead of Saturday, so we could head up to Dallas. I felt fine all thru the weekend, thru Monday's consulting at Promise House, and thru the flight home yesterday afternoon. Last night I took a couch nap (a Nowicki tradition: see # ? <-- until I find the number and edit it in here) before dinner, got up and ate, and then hit the sack. All that was pretty normal after working all day in another city.

About 3 this morning I woke up feeling bloated and with a metallic / vinegary taste in my mouth so I got up and chewed some antacid tablets and washed them down with a little water and went back to bed. Upon laying down that vinegary taste came back up, like when a bottle lays down and the liquid seeks its own level... and I flipped over on my back and went back to sleep for a while.

Well, as you might guess, flipping over and going back to sleep isn't the end... so, as Paul Harvey would say... "Here is the REST of the story!"

WARNING: Gross bodily functions report to follow!

...so, a few winks later, I am awakened by an internal human body alarm that announces to the brain, "Get up! Get up! we have to rush to the toilet..." and we groggily respond and in my bedroom that means navigating around the island of bed thru the shoals of quilt and over the reefs of Time (magazines) that are slippery in the dark and finally into the bathroom, cognating that I should shut the door so as not to awaken my lovely wife with my retching. Usually when I feel nauseous in the middle of the night or in the early morning, there is nothing actually down there to come up when I retch. So my expectation is to make this gutteral retching noise and have no product appear. Well this time it is different and there is at least a couple cups of clearish frothy liquid that I note sleepily, "doesn't taste as bad as last time I puked...when was that... exactly?" I get up off my praying to the porcelain God stance and move to the sink to get a little water... and don't even make it the four feet before I have this sensation that tells my brain I should go quickly to sit on the toilet for a deposit from below. And then my bowels let go of what seems to be two quarts of muck. As is the bowel movement process when theres diarreah-ish (frequency and fluidity of fecal evacuations) one gets up and the process of moving or walking reminds one they ought to be sitting down over there again real soon... like NOW.

So, for me early this morning between the hours of 3:30 until 4:45 am, I was up and down off the toilet intermittently pooping and puking until I felt quite DRY throughout, and BTW, exhausted too. Throughout the mission, as I became more and more awake my brain tried to figure out a diagnosis and all I came up with is the idea that I went too long without my dialysis. According to a few internet resources reviewed this morning, that would seem to be the case, since they warn that missing dialysis sessions can result in "nausea and vomiting"*

So, feeling wimpy today, I called in "sick" and tried to get an early dialysis appointment: "No can do" according to Jay the Boss Nurse.... and later Celeste the Nurse called me and I am going in at 12:30 pm.

El Milagro: I arrived at the dialysis center and told my story to Celeste the Nurse, Jackie the Tech, and then later, Dr. Venkatesh, who was doing rounds today. They all agreed that it sounded like I did go too long without my dialysis. I weighed in at 77.8, which is a little high for me, but not outrageous. Jackie poked me and I settled in to reading my new book, Glenn Greenwald's, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. I read for an hour or so, and then took a nap... until I woke up to catch the early news. My session went fine and I left at 75.2 kgs., with my BP at 106 over 70.

Notes: See Post 207 (January 2008) for an index of topics in this blog. There's also a "Welcome New Readers" post (47: August 2006)
*Stoltz, C. (nd) Health Talk: Kidney Disease. Retrieved July 2008 online from the Washington Post website, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/00/health/healthtalk/health0404.htm